Theoretical models for beam quality evaluation of fiber supercontinuum sources

We propose three theoretical models to evaluate the beam quality of the fiber supercontinuum source as a whole. New definitions of spectral centroid and three factors to evaluate the beam quality of supercontinuum source are introduced. Based on the three factors some supercontinuum sources with different output power and spectra obtained from the experiment are calculated numerically. All the results denote that the three models are feasible and useful for the beam quality evaluation and comparison of the fiber supercontinuum sources as a whole with considering the power spectral distribution and propagation modes.